Matt Rose, an avid trend watcher with a passion for the people of South Africa, is a strategic planner at Publicis Groupe Johannesburg, specialising in market research, shopper marketing and behavioural psychology. He brings a grounded yet often controversial approach to uncovering consumer insights. Honours include 2010 Loeries finalist (Digital) and 2011 Cannes Lions shortlisting (Digital).

Everyone seems to be talking about how easy it is to make money making a smash hit indie game for realise on Android or iOS.
Flappy bird and Candy Crush are so simple anyone can do it right? Well yes and no.
Yes, anyone can do it but they have a concept they like and the persistence to plan, design, develop and implement.
Below are four things that I have learned from my first attempt at indie games development, some of these ...

Comic-meme creation and consumption has taken internet culture by storm and seems to be only increasing in frequency and engagement. Memes come in all types but in this case ‘LOL cats’ and ‘Rage comics’ are being produced at a rate never seen before.
Ben Huh wants to turn this mechanic into news delivery. In a recent interview the man behind I can haz cheezburger spoke of how he sees ‘meme-mechanics’ as the future of news content distribution.
His argument centers on ...

"Going viral": the holy grail of geeks everywhere. The process is deceptively simple and organic reshares and reposts take many forms depending on the platform. A good way to think of the process is as if social media behaves like an amplifier for content created by other media, then chains of retweets by many users lead to observed trends that can then be monitored and capitalised on.
So what are the drivers and mechanics behind self-replicating content? Here are five suggestions ...

Analysis of the pornography industry provides fascinating insight into how consumer ideology shapes online behavior. When we look at the industry in terms of emerging markets we get to catch a glimpse of new forms of media consumption as they blossom.
In emerging markets like Brazil, South Africa and India, the industry is thriving and will follow international mobile trends when it comes to adult entertainment consumption. It's big business, in fact it's the number one commercial industry online. In spite ...